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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26394022">So You Want to Visit The Hellmouth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchiteuthisDucks/pseuds/ArchiteuthisDucks'>ArchiteuthisDucks</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Blaseball (Video Game), Hellmouth Sunbeams - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Splorts, smoothies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:02:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,246</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26394022</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchiteuthisDucks/pseuds/ArchiteuthisDucks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A journalistic (at least, ostensibly) descent into the darkness, and lightness, and strangeness, of the formerly-Moab hellmouth. Splortsmanship, Splortsmanship, is BACK. This is the first fic I've really ever written, and I have no earthly idea why it's for weird internet splorts, but enjoy, if possible. DISCLAIMER: All versions of characters and setting elements represent my own interpretation and are not intended to supersede or disparage anyone else's version! Also, this fic was begun a LONG time previous and does not include developments (such as team swaps, et. al.) that have occurred since. It's a snapshot in time.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Character &amp; Alaynabella Hollywood, Original Character &amp; Nagomi Nava, Original Character &amp; Randall Marijuana</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Customs Declarations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>LOVE AND VIBING IN THE HELLMOUTH</b>
</p>
<p>
  <em> Zohar Brioche </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> Tourism Correspondent, Slatanic Rituals Monthly (Reformed) </em>
</p>
<p>1.</p>
<p>My editor was, and is, very insistent that demand for this feature is nonexistent. The Hellmouth, they slaver and shriek, flecking me with gobbets of spittle that hiss against my scales, is played out. Just a big hole- in our understanding, in the landscape, in reality. Nobody wants to go there. Nobody <em> needs </em>to go there, and if you do, the staff counselor is just down the hall. Follow the screams. Determination, in my case, is bolstered by opposition. I polish my teeth, put on my professional-grade tank top, and buy a pair of sunglasses in virulent neon pink. The perfect ensemble to be stuck behind a bus in.</p>
<p>The bus, in turn, is stuck behind (or at least, below) a billboard. It is striding across the sand, deftly avoiding cactus and crow despite the ponderous nature of its steps; the supporting posts bend like shipwright’s beams, a splinter-clad parody of limbs. The text on it is bright red and repeated in language after language after language, with the lower lines pictorial and difficult to look at for very long. The message, nonetheless, is clear, and clearly provoking the crowd of soused retirees in the chartered bus.</p>
<p>So far, only two empty turquoise cans have made contact with the somber, yellow-clad figures seated on the billboard’s edge, but their aim is improving as they close the distance. The anti-tourism board is echoing every slogan as it appears, cupping their hands and shouting in unison, a shout of shouts that echoes and reverberates as if through a canyon, not an endless plain.</p>
<p>THE HELLMOUTH: DON’T</p>
<p>THE HELLMOUTH: WHATEVER YOU’RE LOOKING FOR IS ELSEWHERE</p>
<p>THE HELLMOUTH: AN UNJUST NON-REWARD</p>
<p>THE HELLMOUTH: THIS MEANS YOU TOO, SHADES</p>
<p>I give the billboard a cheerful thumbs-up and waggle my tongue a bit for good measure. When I first contacted the board, I was inclined not to take them seriously, on the basis that they were continuously shouting and blowing out my phone’s tinny speaker. It took a moment to recognize the actual acoustic experience- a religious one. They don’t really shout. They just all speak together, and never apart, except for the last two words before I hung up on an unprofitable conversation.</p>
<p>“Come home.”</p><hr/>
<p>
  <strong>2.</strong>
</p>
<p>There’s no customs process at the Hellmouth. It’s unclear whether it in fact represents a border, or simply passage from safety to unsafety, a journey each of us makes several times a day all unwitting. If I stop at the shed in the shadow of a tooth- not quite as tall as I’d expected, but big for a tooth- it’s out of courtesy, first of infernal traditions. They don’t make me open the trunk or present identification. I recognize the yellow robes, discarded in a corner, and replaced with slogan tees from every era and affiliation. In a lot of cases, that’s more or less it for clothing, and I can understand this- the heat is a physical and choking presence, all-pervading. I can feel my veins discovering the experience of drought every time I go too long between sips from the box of wine on the front seat.</p>
<p>The inspection is informal. The woman in a Big Dog ensemble informing me she fucks like she fishes, though not in so many words, is gently lifting and rotating me in arms like bunched roots, as if checking for ticks. I don’t necessarily mind the return to my college days.</p>
<p>“You’re not welcome in the Hellmouth,” she intones- distinct from speaking, more impressive.</p>
<p>“It’s okay, hun. I don’t expect to make friends everywhere I go.”</p>
<p>This provokes an exasperated sigh and a tousle of my hair, which sparks and frizzes obligingly. I am sweating, which should be impossible; the liquid is oily black and smells of pitch. It’s one of two things I can smell- the other is crushed basil and petrichor, the kind that comes from rich brown earth such as this place has never, can never, will never see. It’s taken up residence in my nose since I got close enough to outrun the billboard.</p>
<p>“You aren’t getting me,” the inspector says, leaning in. “You’re like…<em> biologically </em>unwelcome. On a cellular level, you shouldn’t be here yet.”</p>
<p>“Yet?” I give my winningest smile, more sharpened palisade than picket fence.</p>
<p>“Just…okay. Lemme see that press pass again?”</p><hr/>
<p>3.</p>
<p>The suit is part of a pile of similar garments, and I use the word <em> pile </em> advisedly. No stacking has been attempted. Some of the helmets are clearly cracked or imploded or spattered with something a bit like blackberry jam but not <em> enough </em>like blackberry jam. Some of the gloves have missing fingers, ragged edges, a shape that suggests there’s still something inside. I’m a tough customer, but it’s still a bit disconcerting; you want to work up to the part of your day that includes skeletal remains. Be hydrated. It's impossible to be hydrated, this close to the Hellmouth. Everything still smells like basil.</p>
<p>The helmet they give me is intact and unmarked, a sphere of bronzed glass above a dingy white quilted collar, and it’s mercifully padded around the shoulders. Softness is almost as good as aloe for a few seconds. It’s not airtight, though it is ventilated; I can feel the hiss and stutter of a fan somewhere beneath my chin. I wouldn’t wear it into a swimming pool, but it <em> does </em>seem to serve the function of the world’s least/most fashionable sunglasses, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.  Sneezing inside the bubble is not to be thought of. The gloves are recognizably astronaut surplus, with fine red stitching on the back of the palm reading APHRODITE IV. The tips are rubberized and softly squeak when I practice flipping the bird, to ensure essential functions are intact.</p>
<p>“Don’t touch anything without the gloves. Don’t take the helmet off. If you need to drink or eat something, there’s a tube here…” a Tourism lad- not the amazon from earlier, sadly, a literally-weedy plant-based something- reaches just below my jaw and demonstrates. “…and a hatch here. Don’t have it open for more than a three-count. If you feel any dizziness, nausea, sense of unreality, or impending doom, do what feels right.”</p>
<p>I nod sagely, as if I’ve made hundreds of these journeys. I make sure the helmet is comfortable. I make sure I can still use my notepad.</p>
<p>“Do they pay you to do this? Greet visitors?”</p>
<p>He gives me a blank, green-eyed stare, then snorts abruptly and laughs the chlorophyll out of his leaves. I don’t have the face to ask him anything else.</p><hr/>
<p>4.</p>
<p>There’s no real concept of payment as such once you’ve passed the border of the mouth, no real business models beyond whatever one can cobble together out of perceived obligations and social responsibility. Realizing your wallet is abruptly and entirely worthless, right down to the names written therein, is like emerging into air conditioning from sticky, glutinous southern heat. The heat of the desert, or of hell, is pure, and dry, and all-pervading, and even if I could sweat I doubt I would bother. The teeth, from inside the border, are different- from without they seemed like great boulders or scarcely-eroded stones, yellowed and immense, but immense on a human scale. From within they stretch upward like a demonstration of perspective; they are large in a way no physical thing ought to be. They are teeth- biting, gnashing, consuming things. They are reaching up, narrowing to points, to sink slowly into the yielding, white-gold flesh of the sun.</p>
<p>There is no concept of payment, but under the light of the sun and the shadow of the teeth I am easily able to find a building ten stories high, mismatched sandstone and rose marble. It sprouts balconies and windows in profusion- a former hotel. I promise the man at the door, in a uniform so perfectly red, that I will leave behind a piece of something that was once whole, and they give me a keycard which has been thickly painted over, an untidy black scrawl reading GO WHERE YOU WISH TO. I wish to go to room 403, and its thick and cloudlike mattress. The fatigue I could not admit to while my welcome was not assured is resting on my shoulder, catlike.</p>
<p>The last thing I do before I sink back into the pillows, in my sealed helmet, is look down, straight down, into the mouth, into, we must assume, hell. At first there is nothing, a black mirror of impossible night to defy the terribly distant sun, but in time you can see it for what it is- a fluid, a sea, and within it, great thunders and forks of lightning. When they pass, the after-images are buildings, canted and groaning, the final result of the city’s ever-increasing angle of attack. They are moving, waving cilia, seeking whom they may devour. To know a place is to be taken by it. To be in a city is to give it part of yourself- it cannot ignore you like the wilderness. You are the sand in its clam. I can feel the mighty and inveterate irritation of hell echo upward, and its invitation.</p>
<p>Tomorrow I will be a splorts correspondent.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Local Splorts Venues</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>1.</p><p>On waking, my concerns regarding whether payment for the room is expected daily or on checkout are removed by the extreme courtesy of housekeeping, who have arranged all the extant towels into a tortoise which holds a small piece of cardstock containing a delicately inked cat emoji and dollar-sign, the latter crossed through angrily in something that close inspection proves to be lipstick. My pillow, head, and the upper reaches of my chest are covered in pebble-like mints, and the respirator of my helmet has drawn in enough of their cooling particulates to give the air inside a tang of refreshment and a distinct sting around my nostrils. My scales feel a minty kinship with the noble chinchilla, who bathes in dust and is cute as hell. </p><p>Downstairs a fully spherical cat, striped terracotta orange and white and gazing outward with a thousand-yard stare, has been propped against a pillow over an overflowing bowl of mixed foodstuffs. Most readily visible are a pair of danishes nestled into a fine stratum of granola, but I can see the delicate curve of an orange swelling upward beneath. At the base of the bowl, taking up most of the rickety card table, is a printed sign, red comic sans: </p><p>THANKS FOR STAYING! GIVE A BREAKFAST TAKE A BREAKFAST.</p><p>There’s no desk, no clerk, no nothin’. I thank whatever deity watches over the broke and the stupid, deposit a mostly-chocolate breakfast bar, and shove pastry through the food hatch, counting. One second. Two. Three. I want nutrition for what I’m going to attempt today, and I am not funded.</p><p>Getting travel and incidental expenses approved requires a delicate dance between open bullshit and thinly-concealed bullshit. A delicate dance is necessary, which I have not bothered to perform, because the true and ultimate cause of my travel to the hellmouth is something which I cannot deny and remain myself, and cannot state and remain a good citizen, sane and hale. I wanted to come here because I have dreamed of it, over and over, until nothing else occupies the hours of sleep. I have seen every inch of the city, at night, although so far nothing I have seen with my waking eyes corresponds. I have to assume the pieces and places I have seen are farther down, down deep, within the mouth itself, with one notable exception. Home games are held above the magma line.</p><p>The Solarium is canted, if anything, more than its surroundings. It is famed for verticality, and that fame is deserved. Everywhere here seems to be looking down, inverted- be ready for that, if you visit- but it’s easy enough to convince yourself that the evidence of your eyes is deceptive, because you are walking and running and drinking horchata to rinse the tang of mint from your mouth, and you can’t do any of those things if you’re falling into an infinite abyss. The horchata lady wanted help naming a goat, and in exchange for two names, was willing to give me instructions to the actual <em> entrance </em>to the building, which made things easier.</p><p>It didn’t make things a lot easier, mind you. Picture one of those brutalist apartment blocks in a city too large and too expensive for you to live in, designed by someone whose name is either all vowels or all consonants, with no in-between. The bones of the solarium look like that- concrete stretched to the breaking point, defying its own weight, an architectural massing fit for a physics problem about tensile strength and gravity. In between the bones, though, goes the meat of the place, and that’s something that shows the evidence of human hands. It’s mostly glass- glass in every color and shade, in graceful art-nouveau curves of enormous women and men with the heads of buzzards, standing athwart things that might be scaled lions and might be furred leviathans. The cast-iron edges of their fingers grip the jaws of their steeds, holding them fast. There’s no ticket-taker, and no door, but there IS a section of concrete, just there, that shows the imprint of shoes, a scattering of dried and discarded gum, a sacrifice of precious saliva in the endless sands.. I cast my grapnel upward and think about falling until I think it’s gone far enough, then recognize the obvious truth that I’m standing on solid ground. I can’t be falling. I’m not falling.</p><p>For just a moment, before I move upward, I feel water rising around my feet, out of the covered earth, steady and rushing and accelerating, teeming with micro-currents, cool against my skin. It’s full daylight, but there’s evening mist, refracting, breeding rainbows, catching sunlight. I reach down and cup a little in my palm, and drink, my straw slurping noisily and squeaking as it extends through the filter. It tastes brackish but not unclean, as if you made tea with an autumn leaf. I take just enough to wet and limber my tongue, and realize only then that my mouth is dry. The current is faster, the water is deeper, and I’m almost worried before I recognize the obvious, that I am not going to stop before I am inside, for well and all. I can’t be falling. I am not falling.</p><p>I hear the hook catch and the rope has weight again, and I start walking along the side of the building, between the bolted-on posts for the ticket lines (that no-one watches) and over the network of fine cracks I don’t want to look at, lest they be seen as deeper, more serious, more structural than they appear. A commemorative cup blows past me, straight upward, and into the roil of the dry wind. In my dreams, it’s always clean, but that’s because I can’t really see- can’t really discern detail, reality, or solidity. That’s why I had to come here, remember it backward instead of forward. Looking up into the sun, through the brassy filter of the helmet, I have to question if there’s a difference.</p><p>2.</p><p>Inside the Solarium is cool and echoing, with the faintest movement of air- as if you were sleeping next to some great body, feeling the susurration of its proof of life even in sleep. There are passages which vanish into the dark, above me, and each one has a clearly labeled arrow too far away to see. Navigation might be possible, with a powerful enough light- an irony that is not lost on me- but in this case I am doing something easier and following a smell, rich and earthy loam, foreign to the desert. The kind of earth that doesn’t resist a gardener’s hand, that doesn’t need a pickaxe helve to break. Having a goal, of course, does not make things easy, either. The hellmouth doesn’t <em> do </em> easy. There are blocks of cool stone and surfaces of unmarred glass, black and cool and lightless, and they are scattered in cyclopean profusion here and there and everywhere. If verticality died, and I wanted to commemorate its many accomplishments in life, this is what might result. I rappel from floor to floor, bench to bench- there are bleachers, of course. The fact that they observe nothing, that the diamond is elsewhere, seems not to have been considered. I am forced to conclude that these are the cheap seats.</p><p>Sometimes, pushing up in the concrete from beneath, there are shapes like teeth; some are flat and grinding, some unpointed but sharpened to an edge, and a few are fangs or tusks, cattywampus to one another, awkwardly crowded into some hypothetical jaw. It’s not clear if these disembodied jaws were poured over, cast into the foundation-stones, or if they have emerged long after construction was complete, and at some point may make their way out into the light and air. In each one, positioned where the tongue might be, there are candle stubs, a few still burning bright. Every highway has a hundred small memorials, and this reminds me of that, but nameless, messageless; remembering no one in particular. Are they mourning, or simply worship?</p><p>I am making my turns and my descents in the labyrinth mechanically, and as I brush the cloth of my gloves over a shrouded fang I realize that what I’m feeling is something close to boredom. I’ve been here before, you see. Every night, all night, when I dream, I see the stadium, the figures in the glass and the gnashing walls. I see the game, and those who play it. It is all so very familiar, but nonetheless- in my dreams, nothing is so sharp as this. In my dreams nobody has a face, a name, a reality. Nonetheless I know them- the sound of their feet, churning the soil, and the echo of the hit. I know where I am. Where I have been. Was it a dream, or simply remembering?</p><p>3.</p><p>The Rhys Trombone Memorial Equestrian Center is a hub of the Solarium, from which other passages radiate like, well, rays. It’s a bit obvious, architecturally speaking. A voice in my head tells me that it isn’t <em> always </em> so central, or so convenient. Sometimes it’s locked far away, because you don’t want to remember. Sometimes it’s right inside the door, and you can have a hot dog and try not to look at the moth. We’ll talk about the moth in a moment. It is an <em> equestrian </em>center, which is not an aspect frequently explored in blaseball, with all respect to the hoofed and long-faced contingent of players who occasionally crop up. As an equestrian center, it requires horses, and for this purpose, the whole perimeter has a wide, brown trench of earth, a horse-keeping moat, around which they thunder periodically. It echoes to the ceiling at such regular intervals it’s less stirring than soothing, like waves on a shore. The smell is less soothing, and I am grateful for my helmet despite the claustrophobic closeness of it, but I can see, far below, figures in black jumpsuits and yellow masks, featureless and eyeless, shoveling and leveling between circuits of their quadruped charges. As the horses come around again I am almost sure I see one vanish beneath them, but when they pass by there is no tell-tale mass of shattered remains.</p><p>I lean over the railing and look the horses over, because I don’t want to look at the moth. As I said, we’ll get to it. The sad thing- or maybe the interesting thing, and certainly, the appropriate thing, is that the horses aren’t really better. They’re good attempts by an unskilled craftsperson, but they haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet. Some have more legs than four. Some have less heads than one. There is one, lagging behind the pack, that I see whinny and gnash mouths on mouths on mouths, a patchwork of lolling tongues and liquid black eyes across its back. I think- I’m certain, really- that it was practice. Trying to get the eyes just right, the teeth just so, straight and ready for apples and sugar cubes. Wanting to have a nice memorial, a good job, for Rhys and the rest of the team. I shouldn’t judge; I don’t know if I’d do a better job. There’s a little bin of them- sugar cubes- on the railing and I toss one downward toward the slow horse, and it vanishes.</p><p>So, as to the moth. I should really say ‘the moths’, because there are many- the counter is alive with them, soft and white like feathers from a burst pillow, some titanic slumber party’s living debris. They are beautiful, and friendly; some land on my shoulders and my arms and every inch of exposed skin until I shake slightly, and they retreat, chastened. They are so very soft, at this size, and I recall the explanation for moth fur- it’s scales, actually. It’s only the smallness of those filmy scales that lets them feel like little rabbits, little cats. That let them masquerade as something soft.</p><p>The moth behind the round, white counter in the center of the room is sufficiently large that every scale is plainly visible, its edges vibrating with each tiny movement of wing and limb and jutting, curling proboscis. Its eyes are black, black, black like a hundred mirrors canted at funhouse angles. If I meet its gaze I see mostly myself- sometimes tall and stretched and angular, sometimes short and stout and compressed. The glint of the visor repeated that many times gives it a burnished appearance, like a commemorative statue. The palp on the end of each limb is cruelly hooked and sharp as thorns, sharp as knives. Its wings beat out again, and again, and again, and as I strain to keep my feet I wonder if this is the breeze, the susurration, the breath of the place- just a moth flapping its wings to summon the hurricanes. It watches me eat my hotdog, long, natural casing, chili (no beans) and mustard (yellow), extra onions, a soft white bun. It’s honestly great, so here’s some service journalism: definitely go for the coney dog special if you visit. I don’t remember what I paid for it, so be ready to give something up.</p><p>When I ask what there is to drink, the thing twitches its antennae and points to the opposite side of the seating area, past overturned and strewn tables. It’s the way the dirt smell was coming from, the fresh, wet smell, so I’m nothing loath to continue on my way. The moth nods. I nod back.</p><p>4.</p><p>
  <span>I see the roots before I see the tree, snaking up walls and over the vault of the ceiling, faintly glowing, softly shifting. You can hear growth, feel it. Occasionally there are cheerful, yellow-and-orange murals beneath them, dancing cups with noodle limbs twirling straws like batons. A man whose head is the sun is pictured drinking deep, wiping his lips, smiling broadly with so many teeth, in a sequence of pictures that I am more or less glad are too faded to fully discern.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tree, when I arrive, proves not to be a tree. It’s another one of those almost-things that the hellmouth adores and cradles to itself, a simulacrum or a shadow made hard-edged by more sunlight than most places expect or could endure. The ridges of the trunk are rugose and wide, stretching up and up and up to slowly shifting gills, dotted here and there with shelves and dangling, oversize lion’s mane or, around the base, the beehive shape of morels taller than I- and I’m pretty tall, nowadays. It’s a mushroom, is the thing; or an agglomeration, a union cooperative, of fungi having made the decision to become too goddamn big. Maybe they’re in league with the moth, that way- a belief in the limitations of ordinary size to convey majesty and intent. Its canopy is the only place you see constituent parts of ordinary size, hen-of-the-wood in profusion spread out over innumerable lichen filaments in a parody of leaves. At the base, mycelium bunches and snakes through black soil, and the smell of loam and fecundity is overwhelming. The helmet isn’t doing anything, and I’m tempted, I’m so tempted, to draw it off and breath deeper. Among the filaments there are bunches, bulges, seeds- they don’t look healthy, and I don’t want to, but TAKE ONE is written above them, and below them, DRINK DEEP.  It’s Alice’s invitation to the tea party, I suppose, so I break the surface tension of the faintly damp thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Inside is a plastic cup, with a topper in the shape of a round, smiling sun, molded from cheap plastic, with a raised line where the two halves have been joined. The logo is repeated on the cup itself, with </span>
  <em>
    <span>stare into the sun </span>
  </em>
  <span>written around it, in several languages I speak and many I don’t, like a shitty beverage-based rosetta stone. I shake the cup, and the liquid inside sloshes and gurgles, viscous. It smells like fresh basil and horse sweat and car-seat vinyl, and I do what the sign says. I drink deep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s time to go.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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